Neo:

“…I don’t think Democrats much care if they lose the Jewish vote, because the number of Jews in the US is small and highly concentrated in places that are and will remain Democratic enclaves even without the Jewish vote. Plus, many Jews today are secular and have replaced any allegiance to Judaism with an allegiance to leftism, so perhaps this won’t even alienate them. I also believe that most of the Jewish donors to the Democratic Party are probably more of that latter frame of mind, and therefore perhaps the calculation is that the party can afford that, too—although I would imagine some of the leaders of the party (Pelosi and Schumer) are none too happy about the possibility of the loss of support…”

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Victor Davis Hanson:

“…Fifty years ago, the United States was facing crises and unrest on multiple fronts. Some predicted that internal chaos and revolution would unravel the nation.

The 1969 Vietnam War protests on the UC Berkeley campus turned so violent that National Guard helicopters indiscriminately sprayed tear gas on student demonstrators. Later that year, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of major cities as part of the “Moratorium to the End the War in Vietnam.” In Washington, D.C., about a half-million protesters marched to the White House.

Native American demonstrators took over the former federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and stayed there for 19 months, declaring it their own sovereign space.

In November 1969, the American public was exposed to grotesque photos of the My Lai Massacre, which had occurred the year before. The nation was stunned that American troops in Vietnam had shot innocent women and children. My Lai heated up the already hot national debate over whether the Vietnam War was either moral or winnable.

Meanwhile, the trial of the so-called Chicago Seven, involving the supposed organizers of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, roiled the nation. The courtroom drama involving radical defendants such as Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin descended into a national circus, as the battle between leftists and the establishment went from the streets to the courtroom.

It was also the year of the Woodstock music festival. More than 400,000 thrill-seekers showed up on a small farm in the Catskill Mountains in August 1969 to celebrate three days of “peace and music.” Footage of free love and free drugs at Woodstock shocked half the country but resonated with the other half, which viewed the festival as much-needed liberation for an uptight nation.

Newly inaugurated President Richard Nixon characterized the national divide as the “silent majority” of traditional Americans fighting back against radical changes in culture and politics.

Under the strain of constant protests, the cultural and moral fabric of the country seemed to be tearing apart. Alternative lifestyle choices sometimes led to violence or death.

When a West Coast version of Woodstock was tried a few months later in Altamont, Calif., the concert ended up an orgy of murder, drug overdoses, random violence and destruction of property.

In July of 1969, liberal icon Teddy Kennedy ran his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass., and his young passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was left to drown. Sen. Kennedy did not report the accident to authorities until 10 hours later.

The next month, members of hippie psychopath Charles Manson’s “family” butchered seven innocents in Los Angeles, among them actress Sharon Tate. The Manson family apparently had hoped that the sensationalized murders would ignite some sort of racial civil war, thereby unraveling the United States.

Yet a wounded United States did not just survive 1969, but reached new heights of scientific, technological and cultural achievement.

For the first time in history, a national economy produced more than $1 trillion worth of goods and services in a single year, as American nominal GDP for 1969 exceeded that level.

America also put the first humans on the moon in 1969 — and did it twice the same year, with the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 lunar missions.

Boeing’s 747 jumbo jet made its first successful test flight in 1969. The 400-passenger airliner was so well designed and ahead of its time that it continues in service today, a half-century after its rollout. It took some 35 years for a European company to introduce a competitor to the 747, the Airbus A380. Yet the latter jet has been something of a white elephant. Many airlines have stopped using the A380, and Airbus has announced that it will stop producing the jets in 2021.

American computer scientists first used a precursor to the internet in 1969, when computers at UCLA and Stanford managed to share an electronic network, known as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).

Fifty years later, what are the lessons of the chaotic year 1969 for our similarly schizophrenic age of polarization, civil disunity, and unprecedented wealth and scientific advancement?

America is such a huge and diverse country, and so abundantly endowed with natural and human resources, that it is capable of achieving unprecedented scientific, economic and technological breakthroughs even as its social fabric is tearing apart.

Or, put another way, while the media highlights crime, protests, grievances and civil disorder, a majority of Americans still go to work unbothered each day.

And in a rare society with a free market, constitutional government and individual freedom, people continue to do amazing things even amid the utter chaos around them…”

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JOHN HINDERAKER:

“…As Scott has noted, the Democratic Party is tied up in knots over Ilhan Omar’s overt anti-Semitism and reactions to it, both inside and outside the party. This is not due to bungling on the part of the Democrats’ House leadership, as some have suggested. Rather, the problem is inherent. It goes to the essence of the modern Democratic Party.

It is fundamental to the Democrats’ worldview and reason for being that all hate comes from the right. They constantly tout themselves as the party of inclusion, tolerance and love. They never tire of talking about, for example, Charlottesville, even though the violence there was caused at least as much by the far-left Antifa as by a handful of ragtag white supremacists. But of course, they never mention James Hodgkinson.

More importantly, our politics today are suffused with hate, to a degree not seen within my lifetime. Above all, hate for President Trump. Also, hate for conservatives. Hate for Republicans. Hate for all those who fail to toe the latest, ever-shifting intersectional line. Everyone who pays attention to Twitter, to Facebook, to cable news, or to current events generally knows this is true. And yet the Democrats cannot admit that they, and the Left, are the overwhelming source of hatred in today’s world.

But Ilhan Omar posed a problem. Her hate was different because it was directed toward a group that mostly supports Democrats. Think about it: what she said about Jews was far milder than what Democrats say about President Trump and his supporters every day. They constantly call Trump a traitor. It was also milder than what many liberals say about white people on MSNBC, without drawing a peep from the Democrats’ leadership. If Omar had trained her fire on the right, or groups associated with the right, like whites or rural Americans, no Democrat would have minded.

Ilhan Omar hates like a Democrat, and she openly expresses that hate like a Democrat. The problem is that she hates people who mostly support the Democratic Party. Not only that, by openly expressing her bigotry she has exposed an important rift among the Democrats. Like the Labour Party in Great Britain, the Democratic Party has become a haven for anti-Semites. (Actually, it has been that for a long time: see, for example, Crown Heights and “Hymietown.”) Today, the fact that many Democrats don’t like Jews is becoming harder to conceal. Omar has made it harder still.

I thought the House Democrats’ original resolution condemning anti-Semitism, without naming Ilhan Omar, was anodyne. I thought she probably could vote for it. But that resolution, which referred only to anti-Semitism, was withdrawn by leadership, reportedly because of an outpouring of support for Omar within the party. That support didn’t come from people who doubted that she is an anti-Semite–she has made that blindingly clear, repeatedly!–but rather from people who share her particular bigotry.

So the Democrats are in a tight spot. Leadership has had to back off, and is in the process of substituting a resolution that toes the party line by nattering on about Islamophobia and so on. A resolution that refers to everything, and therefore nothing. A resolution that tries to preserve the fig leaf of a party that is opposed to hate. Even as its members express the vilest, most hateful, most bigoted views that America has seen in its modern history…”

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MARK STEYN:

“…As Laura Rosen Cohen likes to say, everyone meets at Jew-Hate Junction: excitable young Mohammedans, secular polytechnic Euro-lefties, anti-globalist conspiracy theorists… It’s getting pretty crowded over there.

I’m very bored by the smooth taqqiya Muslims who profess to dig the interfaith outreach. On balance, I prefer the likes of Ms [Ilhan] Omar, who just can’t help herself. She’ll back down a little when Nancy Pelosi orders her to, but forty-eight hours later comes roaring Tweeting back …and dares the Democrats to call her on it.

The House Leadership just backed down. Like Corbyn in London, it can no longer even insist on its anti-Semitic bona fides without weaseling and equivocating. That’s very telling — and, unlike puppet grotesques in a medieval Lenten parade, it’s not the last throes of the past but a glimpse of the future…”

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Steve Hayward:

“…As someone pointed out in the aftermath of Jussie Smollett hoax, the demand for racism now exceeds the supply, so we have to resort to made-up racism to satisfy the demand for leftists to feel outraged and indignant…”

Gail Heriot:

“…Virginia Governor Northam is being asked (by Al Gore among others) to stop “environmental racism.” I don’t know anything about the particular cases being brought to Northam’s attention. But with “environmental racism” things are not always as they seem on the surface.

A few years ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights decide focus its attention on the supposed fact that coal ash landfills and ponds are disproportionately located near African Americans..   The report it issued gave our Chairman the perfect opportunity to make an emotional statement decrying “environmental racism” and even blaming it for the cancers in his family. There was just one problem: The Commission’s empirical study (massively downplayed in the report itself) showed that, if anything, coal ash landfills and ponds may be disproportionately located near whites. Facts didn’t matter…”

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Steven W. Mosher:

“…As I write in Bully of Asia, China is becoming more totalitarian almost by the day. To give just one example, everyone’s social media is monitored all the time, and used as the basis for a “social credit score” that goes down if you criticize the regime, and goes up if you flatter it.

This score is then used by Beijing to determine whether you will be allowed to travel outside the country, obtain a low-interest rate loan, or even buy an in-country plane ticket. If your social credit score falls low enough, you will be sent to a re-education camp even if you have not committed a crime.

Runciman, our British cousin, argues that China’s lack of “individual dignity” is more than compensated for by a surfeit of “national dignity.” In this he is parroting the current party leadership which, in effect, proposes just such a trade-off to the people it oppresses.

Here is, in essence, what the Chinese Communist Party tells the masses: You may be under constant state surveillance, unable to speak freely, and prevented from forming political associations. But remember that to be Chinese is to be part of the greatest phenomenon in human history, and China’s growing economic and military greatness is your greatness.

The national narcissism that such xenophobic and nationalistic appeals are intended to stoke, however, are a poor substitute for the universally recognized human rights that the Chinese people are being systematically deprived of…”

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Female trainees of the Los Angeles Police Department get used to firing their newly issued revolvers in Los Angeles, Calif., March 6, 1948. These future policewomen seem intent on making a good score at the police pistol range. 

The EU has committed to outsourcing its dirty work to authoritarians in the Middle East and Africa—and to confusing dependence for maturity

ADAM TOOZE:

“…In Europe’s relations with its Arab neighbors and former colonial possessions, it is not just fraught history that is at stake. The unprecedented summit between the Arab League and the European Union in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Feb. 24 and 25 was a clash of political regimes. The EU prides itself on a values-based foreign policy that affirms democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Of the 30 Arab states it met in Egypt, only Tunisia comes close to meeting those criteria.

In the end, 20 European heads of government, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, attended, but only after two particular pariahs, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had agreed to stay away. That may have spared the Europeans’ blushes, but it only had the effect of highlighting the incongruity of the EU readily accepting the hospitality of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Sisi is a former general who overthrew the duly elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood in the summer of 2013, at the cost of many hundreds of lives. Since then, he has ruled with an iron fist, imprisoning dozens of journalists and jailing, according to Human Rights Watch, upward of 60,000 of his political opponents. Only last month, nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood were put to death. The overthrow of the democratically elected government put in place by the revolution of 2011 was initially justified as transitional. Sisi’s supporters are now pushing to entrench the general’s grip on power until 2034.

Sisi at least puts on the veneer of a modern international statesman. The Saudis do not even bother. King Salman stumbled embarrassingly through his summit speech before departing the scene. To show others the respect of listening to their opinion was beneath his royal dignity, or perhaps simply beyond the octogenarian’s strength.

Europe has become accustomed to portraying its sacrifices of human rights as the necessary wages of diplomacy in an anarchic world. That is self-flattering—but also self-deceiving. The real question is why Europe feels it is so essential to cultivate government-to-government relations with such authoritarian regimes…”

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Study finds evidence that mainstream economic news is biased in favor of Democrats.

4th Highest

4. California
• Taxes paid as percentage of income: 11.0 percent
• Income per capita: $59,796 (6th highest)
• Income tax collections per capita: $2,055 (4th highest)
• Property tax collections per capita: $1,451 (21st highest)
• General sales tax collections per capita: $997 (21st highest)

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“…A billboard that criticized CNN and its president, Jeff Zucker, over a perceived liberal bias sprang up Friday directly across the street from the news network’s headquarters in Hollywood.

The billboard at the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga features Zucker’s face and faux title, “CEO, CNNPC” and it refers to CNN as the “Communist News Network.” The main message reads: “Keep Korea Divided.”

Before Friday morning, the giant billboard was being used to advertise a marijuana dispensary, but it has been altered by a small band of conservative street artists who go by the name The Faction, and it is the third time in six weeks the group has attacked a TV channel owned by AT&T’s WarnerMedia…”

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Students are getting drunk off vanilla extract, school warns.

A green campaigner faces reality. Worth clicking over.

Michael Shellenberger:

“…In 2002, shortly after I turned 30, I decided I wanted to dedicate myself to addressing climate change. I was worried that global warming would end up destroying many of the natural environments that people had worked so hard to protect.

I thought the solutions were pretty straightforward: solar panels on every roof, electric cars in every driveway, etc. The main obstacles, I believed, were political. And so I helped organize a coalition of America’s largest labor unions and environmental groups. Our proposal was for a $300 billion dollar investment in renewables. We would not only prevent climate change but also create millions of new jobs in a fast-growing high-tech sector.

Our efforts paid off in 2007 when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama embraced our vision. Between 2009–15, the U.S. invested $150 billion dollars in renewables and other forms of clean tech. But right away we ran into trouble…”

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Howie Carr:

“…Have you ever noticed how differently Republicans are treated in the media than Democrats?

Every newsroom in the country used to have what was called the “AP Stylebook” to use in writing news stories.

Now you need two AP stylebooks, one for Democrats, about whom seldom is heard a discouraging word, and a second for the GOP, with a hundred different pejoratives.

Two parties, two vocabularies. One positive, one negative — very bad, evil in fact.

Consider the testimony by Michael Cohen last week in front of various Congressional committees.

For example, since he worked for Donald Trump, Cohen was described about a million times as a “fixer.” Democrats, on the other hand, have lawyers.

To prevent the release of embarrassing information, Democrats’ lawyers negotiate NDA’s — nondisclosure agreements. Republican fixers’ NDAs are “hush money,” or “bribes.”

Hillary Clinton paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat operatives who then bought or made up false Russian dirt on Trump — that was opposition research. Republicans, on the other hand, “collude!”

Republicans lie, Democrats misspeak.

Democrats plan, Republicans scheme.

Republicans hire lobbyists, Democrats use advocates. Republicans employ operatives or hired guns, Democrats prefer community activists.

If a Democrat changes his or her position on an issue, they have evolved … grown. Republicans “flip-flop.”

Whenever an unfamiliar politician is ensnared in some scandal, you naturally wonder which party he or she is a member of. If the “embattled” pol is a Republican, affiliation is usually noted in the headline, or at the very latest in the first paragraph.

If, however, you reach the third paragraph of the story without his party being identified, you can be absolutely certain you are reading about a Democrat miscreant.

Likewise, accusers are handled differently depending on who exactly they’re accusing. Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was almost derailed by the not particularly credible “Dr.” Christine Blasey Ford. One of the women who’s accused Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of sexual assault likewise has a Ph.D., but how often does the alt-left media refer to “Dr. Vanessa Tyson.” Fairfax, you see, is a Democrat.

Was Jussie Smollett’s fake hate crime ever referred to as “alleged?” Of course not. But all the real, documented, videotaped attacks on conservatives — invariably they are alleged, or “according to police reports.”…”

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